Clive Lewis once called Wes Streeting a jumped up turd, it appears things haven't improved
Clive Lewis once called Wes Streeting a jumped up turd, it appears things haven't improved – politicalbetting.com
Of course he finds it peculiar. Self-sacrifice, hypothetical or not, is foreign to the self-serving.I love my city and my constituents.But the authoritarian right is an existential threat. We need the best chance of turning this around.That’s Andy, not Wes https://t.co/RYHNtF89gy
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Seems like there would be an obvious route for Burnham in that case.
The header from @Cyclefree would be volcanic - I’m thinking Thera, maybe Deccan Traps?
It’s almost trivial to be liked for advocating spending more money. Especially when you can blame not spending *even more* on Evil Westminster.
https://x.com/tendar/status/1991379866483044728
https://on.ft.com/3XCLW2E
Still bugs me that he used his cancer as a weapon against the Tories over partygate, because his operation was in a different year to the boozy get togethers. If he didn’t know when he tweeted, enough people have pointed it out, but it’s still there
While Downing Street nursed their hangovers, on 21st May I went into hospital alone for major surgery to remove my kidney cancer. It was the loneliest I have ever felt in my life and worse for my family.
Others had it much worse.
Johnson’s double standards add insult to injury.
https://x.com/wesstreeting/status/1480901993526968328?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Around 01:48 here
https://www.youtube.com/live/aqoP0Np6TyY?si=5EOKN3-0tXtKH7cC
Interesting if you’re betting on the next PM market
https://x.com/wesstreeting/status/1991141529419678146
Other organisations bewailing how difficult it is to understand the judgment might learn from this.
That is the good news. Party in government understands the importance of complying with the law, even if some of its own Ministers say the opposite to the courts (yes, I'm looking at you Bridget Phillipson).
The bad news is that it opens the way for twits like Lucy Powell.
20 May: Martin Reynolds, Johnson's Principal Private Secretary, emails approximately 200 staff to invite them to "make the most of [the] lovely weather" and have some "socially distanced drinks" in the Downing Street garden. The email invites staff to attend from 6 p.m., and to "bring [their] own booze". Thirty to forty people attend, including Johnson for around half an hour.[1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Partygate
The operation was in May 2021. There was an FPN issues for an event in Downing St the previous month. Two separate parties were held on 16 April 2021, same year, previous month, the leaving events for James Slack, Johnson's director of communications, and a photographer. If you’re going to make such serious accusations you should get your facts right.
The government’s crap but this is just crass fact free invective. The constant “Yah, yah, Labour’s shit” may be correct but it’s hardly worth coming back here to read constantly and engage with.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yp1ky55g1o
Casually, I'm wondering if we could look at a similar system to that proposed for Council Tax for VED.
VED to be a % of the purchase price per annum, which would raise the sums we need, but also incentivise smaller, safer for everyone, more cost effective vehicles.
As a for instance, eg 1% of purchase price per annum, dropping to 0.5% from year 11 ? It has the benefit of being simple, but would cause a few squeals. The obvious problem is that such a simple system would be very generous for big SUVs, so purely linear with price might not work, so maybe 2% for heavier or more powerful vehicles.
That's still only a fraction of what we have for the most polluting ICE personal vehicles, if I have my numbers correct. It's complex so I may not be correct on that.
(I'm not sure on index linking; I can see arguments both sides.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Partygate
It would be ludicrous to think he was talking about hangovers from a party a month earlier when he was referring to the news of a party on May 20th. He just got the year wrong
The party was first reported on Jan 10th 2022 and Streeting tweeted on Jan 11th 2022. He was obviously referring to it
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-01-10/email-proves-downing-street-staff-held-drinks-party-at-height-of-lockdown
In part because had an order of magnitude more practical political experience.
Look, I've been on interview panels where we have had to conclude "we can't appoint any of them". But someone has to be PM, you can't just leave the position vacant (like we have at the moment, boom boom.)
And the Conservatives since 2017 show what happens if you dump someone poor when the available replacements are worse.
A result!
In any event why would you support Starmer's anti immigrant, slash benefits, Trump vassal government ? You should be with the Greens or Jezza by now ?
https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1991302352478040496
So I'll stick with my 1% of purchase price, falling to 0,5% after 10 years, as the speculation.
But is he unflushable ?
Only Reform supporters sound as if they think a better alternative is both thinkable and available. And this is mostly on account of them having the only leader who, at least while not in government, is a communication genius.
In the system is is possible to be terrible and the best available.
An outside bet, given that Labour and Tories both are so unpopular, would be that some sort of unspoken alliance/deal between the Green Liberation Front and the LDs would electorally become a real combined challenge to Labour, just as Reform for now have ousted the Tories. Perhaps post budget and post May elections would be the time to have a glance at the chances.
2-3 years as PM to turn this round and establish Pointernomics as the pattern for the next 30 years, then back to retirement with occasional ex-PM jollies and a nice extra pension. Yep, that would be acceptable.
Now, I must get back to waiting for that call...
I’ll be honest, I was duped, certainly by Reeves who seemed competent compared to Annaliese Dodds (an incredibly low bar)
But, as Ganesh says, there is no one any better.
Meanwhile Badenoch seems to be getting on with the job and is making fewer errors.
I think this government’s terrible too but this isn’t analysis, just invective. The light to heat ratio on this site is not healthy anymore.
Edit: ditto eye shields.
Still, keep whistling into that gale if you want to.
The news of a party in Downing Street on May 20th 2020 broke on Jan 10th 2022
On Jan 11th 2022, Streeting tweeted
While Downing Street nursed their hangovers, on 21st May I went into hospital alone for major surgery to remove my kidney cancer. It was the loneliest I have ever felt in my life and worse for my family.
He obviously thought the hangovers he referred to were being suffered as he was having surgery, but he got the years mixed up. It would be ludicrous to believe he would phrase his tweet that way, the day after news of a party on May 20th broke, if he didn’t think his operation was day after that party.
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-01-10/email-proves-downing-street-staff-held-drinks-party-at-height-of-lockdown
(Tbf, his comment was greeted with disbelief and scorn by the rest of the committee and the candidate was offered a place. Turned us down I think.)
It looks obvious that a high proportion of MPs have little real skill in being representatives in the Burkean sense, and legislators in the statesman sense. It is staggering that so few of the 400 Labour MPs bring to parliament the gifts of top management in medium and large companies, entrepreneurship, wealth creation and so on.
PB Tories conveniently misremember that or claim they left a golden legacy.
Nonetheless that can't excuse Starmer's ineptitude.
The house is going pretty well thanks, we've reached the interior fit-out now: floor tiling, bathrooms, electrics, kitchen, internal doors, etc...
We're hoping to be in by early spring. Then the fun begins with the landscaping - quite of lot of work required to convert a building site into a garden 😱 - but we do already have some trees in:
More here for anyone who is interested.
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/blog/87-contemporary-build-in-north-dorset/
What on earth has that to do with anything?
They seem to be taking their own pretty time over updating the official government guidance on the subject.
Older cars - pay fuel duty only. EV cars exempt (think of it as an early adoption bonus).
New cars - have a "car tax band" calculated at the point of purchase. Various things such as the car cost, how much it pollutes, weight etc go into calculating the band. Applies to both EV and new ICE cars, but ends up in the 1% to 2% of purchase price range you mention. The car tax band is logged under the car registration and so known/unchanged for future second hand sales.
Has the benefit of 1) not applying retrospectively and irritating a lot of people day 1, 2) solving the long-term tax gap creates by the decline of fuel duty revenues. Revenues would increase gradually over time as fuel duty revenues decline.
The problem is the politics. If we can't means-test something like WFP then there really is no hope for improvement. But if you think you've got the vision, strength and communication skills to make a reform like that stick, then there is an opportunity there to transform the country and drive it forwards.
1. it reminds me of Johnson
2. it reminds me of Thatcher on a tank
Maybe I should have widened it to inappropriate props
I just went to the shops to buy some breakfast, and on the way was genuinely thinking you’d have seen sense when reading the facts I presented. I had it lined up as one of the rare PB apologies!! But, no
Oh well, none so blind etc
1% of current "book value" would probably be sane - although for simplicity one could use a standard depreciation curve based on the new price (possibly with a milage modifier, as well age) rather than having to keep assessing each car individually.
I'd be in favour of cars over 15 years old being free - past that point they are either old bangers run by the poor, or classics doing low milages as second cars.
From a position of wanting to maximise employment, economic activity, VAT receipts, and road safety, a tax that increases over time is best.
Japan has a car tax that increases over time, a 10yo car is pretty much depreciated to nothing because of the taxes, and they end up exported through the sandpit. My car is one of these.
Personally I’d tax EVs based on weight squared, which encourages smaller cars and advances in battery technology. Weight to the fourth power, which is related to road wear, probably makes long-range EVs impossible at the moment.
On 2, I think you misremember. Like John Major (IIRC) Mrs T didn't dress up in combats - though in the modern era one does need a helmet for safety as Ms Truss exemplifies (lots of pointy sharp bits inside a tank - not sure about the flak jacket).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-uk-liz-truss-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-boris-joshnson-rcna45838
The fact I typed ‘get togethers’ instead of ‘get together’ on my phone while I was in bed this morning doesn’t alter the fact that I made the same point I am making now to Streeting himself the day he made his erroneous tweet
The drinks were in May 2020 & your surgery was a year later in May 2021. Acknowledge your error & remove this pitiful & inaccurate attempt at sympathy vote garnering
https://x.com/asfarasdelgados/status/1480956482891956228?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Maybe one day you’ll both admit your mistakes!
Are those apple trees ?
No snow at the top of Nottinghamshire, but it's still brass monkeys on the temperature scale - Zero Centigrade.
Priorities: Our glass is half full and getting fuller, not the reverse.
Competence in everything the government/state takes responsibility for (44% of GDP) so that it runs really well.
Having a plan for short, medium and long term and communicating it brilliantly. Be master of the narrative.
1st world problem, I guess!
Edit: I think those three in the foreground are red hawthorns.
A political downside is that it is more transparent and predictable, which I don't see being popular with the Treasury..
I am assuming a Prime Minister should be educated at Dulwich College, at the very least.
Or you are Wes Streeting!
I have written a header on this. https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/11/01/a-halloween-nightmare/ and the one earlier this week.
Or you can see these two articles by Legal Feminist - one by me: https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2025/10/31/cracking-the-code/ and https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2025/11/14/three-questions/
At any event, the guidance is not law and cannot change it, the judgment is clear, the law is effective now and has been in fact since 2010 and on toilets for years before that (since 1992) and quite a few bodies have started complying with it including, amusingly, NHS Fife, which is also spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money arguing the opposite.
Now they would have had perhaps a 3x safety factor, which you’d expect in such constructions, but now you have cars that weigh 3x what they did 60 years ago, and a 60-year-old structure that is close to it’s design life, there’s not an awful lot of margin left…
This is from Councillor Darren Grimes, and the Reform Exposed argument is that he is using fake AI pictures to demonise immigrants (obviously Muslims, because reasons), by portraying groups of them ogling white children. It is a story about "Councils from rich areas" allegedly buying up or renting housing stock in Durham for immigrants, and Grimes is to my eye trying to exploit the "protect our girls" narrative, and attack the Labour Govt at the same time.
I think that, if we remove the imo fake photo and the anti-immigrant stuff, he actually has a story. There was considerable lefty outrage (particularly in the Independent) in iirc the second half of the 2010s, around London Councils dispersing tenants who needed emergency housing as far away as Birmingham, under pressure (eg that if they did not accept they would not be offered something else). The objections then were around vulnerable people being ripped away from their communities, local support networks etc.
It's still an issue at a low level over the last year or two (I've noticed occasional minor reports without cut-through), and I think this could be made into a serious mainstream political issue if reported accurately.
But IMO Grimesy is overreaching again, and that is what will get him eventually in some manner.
Reform Exposed: https://x.com/reformexposed/status/1991413666692862196
Picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G6JOKOSW0AA9dhI?format=jpg&name=large
Grimes article: https://www.darrengrimes.com/p/exclusive-durham-files-prove-labour
https://www.shinmaywa.co.jp/products/parking/introduction/elepark/
PS. Did you say she didn't dress up? She's gone the full Lawrence of Arabia!
https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/5mo43i/margaret_thatcher_in_the_commanders_hatch_of_a/